Dedication planned for U-2 crash victims memorial

Cal Fire-Butte County Capt. Mike Conaty works on finishing a new memorial at the agency?s headquarters on Nelson Avenue on Friday. The memorial will be dedicated on Nov. 22 to Air Force Capt. Randy Roby and Geraldine Vering, who died when the U-2 Roby was flying crashed at the former Mercury-Register building on Second Street in August 1996.
(Barbara Arrigoni/Staff Photo)

OROVILLE -- On Friday, Cal Fire-Butte County will dedicate a new memorial commemorating one of the strangest accidents in Butte County history.

On Aug. 7, 1996, Air Force Capt. Randy Roby was piloting a U-2 spy plane thousands of feet above Oroville, having just taken off from Beale Air Force Base.

The aircraft suffered mechanical failure and there was an explosion in the plane about a mile above north Oroville.

Roby ejected from the plane and he parachuted to the ground on Nelson Avenue in front of the Cal Fire-Butte County headquarters. The pilot was fatally injured in the mid-air explosion.

The plane itself crashed about half a block away, adjacent to the north wall of the then-Mercury-Register office at 2061 Second St.

The plane exploded on impact. Geraldine Vering of Oroville, a customer who had just left the building, was killed in the blast.

There were just under 20 M-R employees in the building at the time of the incident. None of them were physically injured.

Friday's event will take place at 2 p.m. at the fire department headquarters, 176 Nelson Ave.

The event will mark the replacement of a wooden memorial that had been on the Fire Department property for many years with a metal and stone monument.

"Although it has been over 17 years since the accident, the sacrifices made by the families of Capt. Roby and Ms. Vering will always be remembered by the civilians and emergency personnel that responded on that fateful day," stated Chief George Morris.